At Mailbox Monday, we encourage participants to not only share the books they received, but also to check out the books received by others. Each week, our team is sharing with you a few Books That Caught Our Eye from that week’s Mailbox Monday.
We encourage you to share the books that caught your eye in the comments.
EMMA:
Teaching kindergarten in Thailand wasn’t the job Dian Seidel had in mind when, at age sixty and craving adventure, she convinced her husband that they should try working abroad. But coping with rambunctious children, sweltering heat, and Covid-19 turned out to be the challenge she needed. Struggling to understand Thai culture, their school, and their marriage, could she learn Thailand’s essential lesson: mai pen rai, don’t worry, keep cool?
Part travel memoir and part second act story, Kindergarten at 60 is a retirement tale like none other. With gentle humor and polished prose, Seidel explores universal themes via the adventures of everyday life. Job-hunting retirees confront age restrictions. A couple navigates 24/7 togetherness for the first time in their lives. Professionals accustomed to working with adults are overwhelmed, and charmed, by a passel of two-, three-, and four-year-olds. An introvert struggles to forge cross-cultural and cross-generational friendships. Americans face the challenges of the five-tone Thai language and five-alarm Thai chilies.
Seidel’s heartwarming story offers a unique perspective on contemporary Thailand and introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters at Pathum Thani Prep. Join the journey, meet the kids, and experience Kindergarten at 60.
“I don’t know much about Thailand, so this travel memoir is very appealing.”
In this ingenious and subversive twist on the classic gothic novel, the mysterious past of an island mansion lures two sisters into a spiderweb of scandal, secrets, and murder.
Two sisters, strangers since birth yet bound by family secrets, are caught up in a century-old mystery on an isolated island.
After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she’s the heroine of a gothic novel—the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls? But before Blake can discern the novel’s ending, she’s found dead, murdered in a claw-foot tub. The proprietress of White Hall stands accused.
Summoned by a letter sent from Blake before she died, Thalia Mills returns to the island she swore she’d left for good. She finds that Blake wasn’t the first to die at White Hall under suspicious circumstances. Thalia must uncover the real reason for Blake’s demise before the forces conspiring to keep Block Island’s secrets dead and buried rise up to consume her too.
“I enjoy gothic novels, though I prefer if they stay more on the side of mystery than horror.”
The Cafe at Beach End, by RayAnne Thayne found at Bookfan.
When Meredith Collins was a child, the little beach town of Cape Sanctuary lived up to its name. Spending summers there with her grandmother, Meredith finally felt safe and loved.
Now she’s returning in disgrace. Her late ex-husband swindled investors out of millions of dollars and made Meredith a figure of scorn—though she knew nothing about his scheme. But she still has the beach cottage she inherited from her grandmother and half ownership of the local café. It’s a place to work and earn a little money. That’s if her cousin, Tori, will let her through the door. Once, Tori and Meredith were as close as sisters—until Meredith chose her neglectful parents’ expectations over their bond. Now widowed with a teenage daughter, Tori isn’t setting out a welcome mat for the woman who let her down so badly.
While Meredith tries to make a fresh start, she is drawn to a mysterious writer renting the cottage next door. Liam Byrne’s kindness is a balm, though she worries he might not be so friendly if he knew who she was. But Liam has his own secret and a mission that will help Meredith confront her past—and maybe, claim a surprising future…
“I like this author and this looks like a great summertime read.”
Homecoming, by Kate Morton found at An Interior Journey.
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.
Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.
Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital, she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused. It’s even more alarming to hear from Nora’s housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident and had fallen on the steps to the attic—the one place Jess was forbidden from playing in when she was small.
At loose ends in Nora’s house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora’s bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime—a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find…
“I’ve read this author too. I like the cover and this sounds like a good historical mystery/thriller.”
What books caught your eye this week?
Mailbox Monday 
Nice looking books.
Thank you for the shout out.